May 2008 archive

Iceland topped Vision of Humanity’s Global Peace Index of 140 countries that analyzes how peaceful they are regarding international policy and domestic conditions, The Financial Times reported Tuesday.

Because of continued violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq ranked last in the index developed by the organization based in Australia.

So says annual study ranking nations on how peaceful they are

Breaking Dawn Songs that voices seldom share Does it matter if you hear me When the morning comes I’ll be there by your side –Harry Nilsson Can you hear me? Does it matter if words adapt to three-part harmony? Are you waking? Will you stop here to share yourself so everyone can see? And in the morning when I am here I may be spreading a good thought And sometime later when you stop by will anything of substance have been taught? Can you hear me? Does it matter? –Robyn Elaine Serven –March 18, 2008

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

We need to take back our data.

Bruce Schneier writes in a commentary on Wired that we have become intimately bound with our data in the information age.  The bits of information about us that are collected and stored in hundreds, even thousands of different spots around the globe determine whether we can get a job, obtain health insurance, have a loan approved, even board an airplane or enter a foreign country.

We leave a data trail wherever we go: when we use a discount card at the supermarket; when we log on to the Internet through our ISP; when we pick up a cell phone call.  Each bit and byte has the potential to affect our future, yet we have no control over who handles it, who gains access to it, even whether we can have a look at it ourselves.

A while back I had made a big stink about the primaries dragging on, because of the damage being done to the Democratic Party by having two massive egos battling it out until August.  But after doing some reading and looking at the last couple of big wins for Hillary Clinton, the latest apparently being in Kentucky, I’ve come to the conclusion that the former First Lady should stay in this race as long as she thinks she can get the nomination to run for president.  A large part of this has to do with the corporate media having participated in the drive to push her out of this campaign, “for the ‘good’ of the party and the nation.”

The pressure being applied to Clinton to get out of the race is both unprecedented and unjustified,  a solid case made by Eric Boehlert at Smirking Chimp.

Looking back at history, it’s hard to find evidence of the same media response to Ronald Reagan’s failed 1976 presidential campaign. Taking on President Gerald Ford, Reagan lost more primaries than he won, and Ford won a plurality of the popular vote, but neither man had enough delegates to secure the nomination. So the campaign went to the GOP convention, where Ford prevailed. The bitter battle did nothing to damage Reagan’s reputation (in fact, it did quite the opposite), in part because the media did not collectively suggest the candidate was acting selfishly or irrationally. Instead, Reagan walked away with a reputation as a resilient fighter who stood up for his conservative values.

And what about Sen. Ted Kennedy’s doomed run in 1980? He trailed President Jimmy Carter by more than 750 delegates at the end of the primary season and insisted on fighting all the way to the convention, where he tried to get committed Carter delegates to switch their allegiance. The press did not spend months during the primary season ridiculing Kennedy, in a deeply personal tone, for remaining in the race.

And what about Gary Hart in 1984? He and Walter Mondale split the season’s primaries and caucuses evenly, and neither had the 2,023 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Superdelegates eventually determined the winner. (Sound familiar?) Mondale had many of them locked up even before the campaign season began, so after the final primary between Mondale and Hart was complete, it was obvious that Mondale was going to be the nominee because Hart could not persuade enough superdelegates to change their mind and support him.

When Hart took his crusade all the way to the convention, the media did not form a posse and decide it was their job to get Hart to quit for the good of the party. (And the press certainly didn’t form a posse in March to start pushing Hart out of the race.) Nor did the press collectively suggest that Hart had an oversized ego that had turned him into a political monster.

That new media standard has been created exclusively for Hillary Clinton.

It’s very difficult to argue with this line of reasoning.  Granted, there is a legitimate case to be made for pressuring Clinton to drop out; her threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran marks her as dangerously unstable, like John McCain.  For that reason alone, she should have done the honorable thing and announced the end of her campaign.  That she hasn’t is indicative of her inherent selfishness trumping any and all sense of decency.

But leaving that aside, and doing the delegate math, there are few if any legitimate reasons to expect her to leave the race when all indicators are that she may yet pull off a win at the Democratic National Convention in August.  The ongoing bloodbath between Clinton and Barack Obama is still likely to result in a battered and financially broken nominee losing to Republican John McCain in November.  But that was going to happen anyway, regardless of which Democrat ultimately gets the nod, because of the insistence by both candidates on running to the political right instead of embracing the progressive base.

The only reason left, therefore, is hatred of Clinton that goes beyond all reason.  Not that she hasn’t brought a lot of that upon herself, mind you, but still, there’s no justification for it.  (As Paul Krugman pointed out in a February New York Times column, Clinton Rules are certainly in full effect.)  And there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it all.  Whatever the source of this hatred, it is that more than anything else which drives the agenda to push her out before convention time.

Could it be genuine fear that she might actually manage to get the nomination?  More than that, could it be absolute terror at the prospect that she could actually win against McCain in November with a large enough margin that the outcome wouldn’t be in doubt (thus preventing the GOP’s electoral fraud machine from claiming a “victory” that can be spun in the media as credible)?  I don’t see why, seeing as how even if she becomes president there is no reason to expect she would do any better or worse than Obama — or, for that matter, McCain.

The answer is right in front of me.  I’m just not able to see it.

Found Poetry

From our StatCounter service I receive daily emails with various stats, including the search terms that people used to find our site.  I usually let these sit in my inbox until I have a few months saved up and then I sort through and pick out some of the strange or unusual ones.   As the list builds, I begin to notice common themes and phrases. Occasionally they will be in a sequence that actually makes sense.  By grouping and rearranging the phrases I put together the following Found poems.  The phrases in the titles and passages are exactly as entered. I haven’t edited for spelling or added/removed words.

our multipolar disorder

elected officials inept

crippling nostalgia

the american dream? time to wake up!

the next revolution is gonna be a revolution of ideas

if it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie, but we gotta fight

the fear urgency of now

no matter how long the darkness is

the sunbeams will cut through them like swords.

we are confronted with the urgency

while usa sleeps about war

Cross posted from my blog, The Wild Wild Left

Ed Gillespie, Counselor to the President wrote this letter to Steve Capus, President, NBC News.

Amazingly enough they have no problem with O’raly’s Fox-step right bias but lay these complaints at the feet of NBC:

I’m sure you don’t want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the “news” as reported on NBC and the “opinion” as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines. I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network’s viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don’t hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.

Capus, bless his heart, replied (in part):

“Just as the White House does not participate in the editorial process at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions,” NBC said in a statement.